Unconventional Remedy
by Dahne
Summary: The classic cliche of waking up in a stranger's bed. Vamp/Raiden. Two followups added, regarding the practical problems of alternate lifestyles.
1. Chapter 1

Okay. One thing at a time.

His name. His name was Jack. He'd gone by other ones, usually when he didn't have much of a choice in the matter, but for now it was Jack.

His name was Jack, his head hurt, and he was somewhere soft.

It wasn't much, but it was a start.

Now that that was settled, he could move on to more complex problems. How he'd gotten here, for example. Judging by the horrible taste in his mouth, the headache, and the fact that he had to systematically reason this out in the first place, alcohol was definitely involved. As he processed this, it dawned on him slowly that the deep, even breathing he was hearing was not entirely his own.

A _lot_ of alcohol.

Waking up next to another person was strange in itself. It felt...kind of nice, actually. He couldn't remember the last time he'd let it happen. The dreams had gotten less frequent over time, but he still hadn't wanted to run the risk of being completely unguarded near Rose.

Rose.

He groaned as the name caused a whole glacier of memories to avalanche through his mind. The breathing next to him hitched, mumbled, and returned to its rhythm. It all started with Rose. Rose and the baby. Specifically, the baby not existing. He said he knew there wasn't one and she said she had been lied to too and he said if she was still trying to use him he didn't want anything to do with her and she said Jack it's not like that and he said bullshit and she said well why don't you just leave then and he said maybe I will and she started to cry...

Yep, the alcohol fit in just perfect there.

It had come from an dark, anonymous, smoky bar. He could remember that much. It had been the kind of place people go to when they don't much care where they end up. It was a place for people like him, people with pasts like his, the kind that didn't feel right in broad daylight. He shouldn't have been surprised at who he'd run into there.

His mind seemed to shy away from that for some reason. He let it. If it was important, he figured he'd find out sooner or later. To help distract himself, and because he knew it was something he'd have to do eventually, he opened his eyes.

This is his first mistake.

"OH HOLY SHIT!"

"Ngruh?" said Vamp.

As fast as he could, which turned out to under the circumstances be pretty damn fast, Jack bolted to his feet and slammed up against the nearest wall. It was all clear now. Somehow, under the benediction of the God of Comically Catastrophic Timing, he'd gotten well and truly sloshed and then run into his enemy of was it only a few months ago wow time sure did fly and then he'd been raped by a crazy homicidal vampire or maybe he'd raped _him _he wasn't quite sure about that part but he knew he remembered somebody trying to grope somebody and somebody getting indulgently fended off and he could hardly believe he wasn't dead already which must mean that something even worse was about to happen and he tried to distill this all into an outburst of significant horror and rage but all that came out was,

"You!"

Then, when this seemed to lack the desired effect;

"_What the fuck did you do to me?_"

For his part, Vamp appeared mostly oblivious to the dire implications of the situation. His response was that of someone who would much rather be fully oblivious to everything for at least a few more hours.

"Nothing," he grunted.

"Wh...Why should I believe you?" Jack demanded. The forthrightness of the lie enraged him.

"For one thing," Vamp explained, as patiently as could be expected less than a minute after waking up with a panicked, shouting man in his bed, "we're both fully clothed."

Jack looked down. "Oh."

"And for another," Vamp continued, allowing his eyes to slip shut again, "I do have standards."

"Hey!" Jack protested, irrationally stung. "I'll have you know, I...wait, why am I arguing about this? Forget that. How did you find me?"

"You were in a bar," Vamp sighed, accepting the need to set things straight before they took advantage of the confusion and Rashomoned, "shouting something about kitchen herbs and women and massive governmental conspiracies at anyone who would listen. I intervened before the audience could run out of things to throw and get restless." (It was the sort of bar ambulance drivers nodded knowingly at the name of.) "I ended up drinking more than I have since...for years in order to keep it away from _you_, and, as you couldn't have made it to the gutter without a map and a native guide, I brought you back here. That's all. Go home."

"I...don't think I have a home to go to," Jack said, mostly to himself.

"Then stay here. _I don't care._ Just shut up." With that, Vamp went back to sleep.

Jack was left to sort through his limited options. This was not an auspicious start to the day.

* * *

"You are," he began rationally, "supposed to be dead." 

"Probably," Vamp agreed. He cracked an egg over the sink and carefully separated out the yolk into a glass.

So much for rationality.

He tried again. "You killed Emma."

Vamp should have snarled at him, or attacked him, or even made excuses. Not just said, "Yes." If anything, he looked tired.

Third time's a charm. "You tried to kill me."

Vamp took a bottle of tabasco sauce down from a cupboard and shook a few drops onto the egg. "Do you have a point?"

"I, um, thought that sort of spoke for itself," Jack said.

Sighing, Vamp finally addressed him directly. "Look," he said, voice tinged with exasperation, "that was a long time ago. You had your reasons. I had mine. My reasons–" It may have been Jack's imagination, but for a moment he looked pained– "are gone now. And as you have yet to resume attempting to kill me, I assume yours are as well."

Their eyes locked for a long moment. Jack tried to remember exactly why they had been enemies in the first place.

This is his second mistake.

So much of that time felt like an endless chain of reactions, running because he was being pursued, fighting because he had no choice. They had fought because they had been enemies. They had been enemies because they fought. Every time Jack tried to cut things down to find the shape of the truth, they turned out to be a Moebius strip.

His point made, Vamp turned away, back to whatever it was he was doing.

"Yeah," Jack said, the anger and accusation draining out of him. "Yeah, I guess they are."

Vamp added salt and pepper and made no comment.

Jack leaned back against the counter, absentmindedly watching him. Being deadly enemies was a good place to start, actually. There was nowhere to go but up.

"You know, ever since then," he said meditatively, not needing to specify what he meant, "it's like I've been searching for something. Rose - my girlfriend - former girlfriend, now, I guess - for a while there, I almost managed to convince myself that she was it. But she wasn't. In a way, I think she knew that, too. I think she kept trying to— Ugh! That's disgusting!"

Vamp finished the egg in one smooth swallow and set down the empty glass.

"Hangover cure," he explained. "Want one?"

"No!"

And Jack's imagination must have been putting in some serious overtime; he almost thought he saw him smile.

* * *

It wasn't long before curiosity won out. 

"I'm sure I don't want to know," Jack said, "but what did I say to you last night?"

"You said that it was good to see me," said Vamp. "That I was proof that the entire thing hadn't been a hallucination."

"Oh." That sounded about right. There had been a surreality to those days. Sometimes he didn't know whether it felt like they had never happened, or if they were still happening, and anything else was just a momentary daydream. He remembered the strange quality that sunlight got reflecting off of all that salt water, and the taste of gunpowder.

Then he remembered something else much more recent.

_"'s good to see ya. Makes it almost seem like it wasn't all just a big fuckin' hallu...hollu...dream after all."_

"_I wouldn't have thought I was someone you'd be all that happy to see." _

"_Ha! Believe me, I'd rather see you right now than that-" he raised his voice for effect- "BITCH. All _you've _ever done is try to kill me, and hell, a lotta people've done _that _."_

"_I can imagine," he muttered under his breath._

"_HEY!" Jack stood in an excitingly wobbly fashion. "You wanna start something, asshole?" He fell back down, hitting his chair mostly by luck, and laughed. "Nah, I don't mean it," he confided. "I'm drunk."_

"_Yes. Yes, you are." _

"_HEY!" Jack shouted again, this time in the general direction of the bar. "Who do I have to get groped by to get a drink around here?"_

_The bartender looked up from where he was ungently persuading a pair of patrons to continue their disagreement outside where there was less of his property to get blood on, more for the principle of the thing than because there was anything nearby that might not have its appearance and bacterial makeup improved by the addition, did some quick mental calculations as to how many people present at the table were likely to comprehend the idea of a tab, and when the number came to greater than zero placed a full glass on it. _

"_Here's to women," Jack declared. He picked up the glass, raised it to his lips, and drank, utterly failing to notice when Vamp plucked it deftly from his fingers, drained it, and handed it back halfway through the motion. The tableau was repeated a few times, until Jack was fairly sure that Vamp's slight weaving in his vision was not due entirely to his own admittedly impaired viewpoint. _

"_Come on," Vamp said, waving off an impressively detailed proposal from a lady whose virtue fell firmly under the heading of 'negotiable,' "let's get out of here."_

_After taking care of the tab, Vamp emerged out into night air that felt like cold water after the close smoke and testosterone-choked atmosphere indoors, Jack's arm draped unabashedly over his shoulders. _

"_Man," Jack drawled, still working at the puzzle of anatomy and spatial relationships, "is that even possible?"_

"_I wouldn't bet on it." Vamp was occupied by coaxing two pairs of feet into traveling along a semblance of a straight line. Neither set were proving terribly cooperative. _

"_Hey. Hey, Vamp." Jack's mind had cleared a bit in the night air, and his tone was serious. "Thanks." _

"_You're drunk," was all he said, steering sharply to the right and narrowly avoiding a collision with the brick wall of a tenement building. _

_Since his attempts to direct the course only seemed to make things more difficult, Jack gave up on it and left that part over to Vamp, leaning in to rest his head by the other man's neck and close his eyes._

"_Mm," he murmured sleepily. "You smell nice."_

"_You're _very _drunk." _

_In the very back of his mind, Jack nearly noticed that he didn't push him away.  
_

_

* * *

_

Vamp watched him with interest.

"I've never seen," he observed, "a person who could blush with his entire body before."

There were disadvantages to having a preternaturally pale complexion. Jack had never been given reason to think that having a vampire try very hard not to laugh at you might be one of them.

"Oh god." Jack sunk his face into his hands. These were also bright pink, so it didn't help much. "Oh– Oh man. I'm sorry. God."

"It's all right." Vamp coughed discreetly.

"It's not funny!" Jack insisted, which might have been more convincing if he hadn't been laughing.

It wasn't long before Vamp got himself back under control. "I understand that you have no reason to trust me," he said.

"I know!" Jack said cheerfully. "That's the great part. It'd be nice to get stabbed in the front for a change."

"You're bitter, for one so young," Vamp said.

"Young. What does 'young' mean?" Vamp said nothing, only shot him a quizzical look, and he thought, to hell with it. "I was a child soldier," he explained. "Spent most of the time until I was twelve either dodging bullets or filling people with them."

"I see." That was all.

It was...easy. Nothing like the confession Rose had wrung out of him. Why was it easy?

"What's your real name?" he asked on impulse. "And if you say Vlad, I'm leaving."

Vamp's mouth quirked up at the edge. "What's yours?"

He'd forgotten that there were people who didn't know everything about him.

Hesitating only a second: "Jack."

"Emilian."

He felt like he had accomplished something.

* * *

It wasn't until a week had passed that Jack recognized the signs. He'd seen it before; one of the other children would make a private promise and go quiet and hazy at the edges, trade their desperation for a kind of patience. It was always fulfilled, sooner or later. Usually sooner. 

"You're waiting to die, aren't you," he said.

"Yes," said Vamp. Emilian. It was strange to think of him that way, as a man with a name.

Jack had expected more, startlement perhaps, or anger, though in retrospect he realized he shouldn't have.

"Well..." he said, at a loss. He'd never been much good at articulation. "Don't."

This earned him a hint of surprise. Emilian looked up at him, eyes flecked with amusement. "And why shouldn't I?"

_I've lost everything_, he didn't say. He didn't need to. There was no despair to him. He would not go hunting death, in the way that Fortune had. Jack knew this, in the same way that he knew Emilian would consider waiting for it more polite.

"I...don't know right now," Jack admitted. "But I'll figure it out. Then I'll tell you. I don't-" he lifted his chin- "give up that easily."

"No," Emilian said quietly. "You don't."

* * *

It was fascinating to Jack just to see him. The sheer incongruity of him doing normal, mundane things was enthralling. Sometimes he would just watch him. If Emilian noticed, and he must have, he made no objection. 

It was evening, just early enough that there were still shadows. Emilian was on the front porch, staring as the sun went down, and Jack was alternately watching him through a window and trying to pretend he wasn't.

He wasn't sure where it came from, but there was a rangy grey cat, an old alley veteran, skulking near the bushes. When Emilian glanced at it, it flinched, tensing in expectation of curses and projectiles. It relaxed slightly when none came, and stalked forward a few cautious steps. He reached out slowly, letting it get the scent of him, until it dropped its reticence and headbutted him wantonly. He scratched it behind the ears and smiled, a little.

This is when Jack realizes that Emilian is beautiful.

* * *

"Will you go back to her?" 

Jack gave it due consideration.

"No," he said. "I don't think I will. I've sort of outgrown her, I think. Like I don't need her anymore. There was a weird kind of dependance to her. Like, she tried so hard to convince herself that she _needed _me, that I _needed _ her. Like it was some sort of insult that she couldn't be with me everywhere, or know everything about me. She wanted...I don't know what she wanted. But I couldn't give it to her, and I don't think she ever forgave me for that." It surprised him, to be talking so much. Emilian had a way of listening _at _him that let him say things he hadn't known he'd ever thought. "It's like...sometimes I wish there was somebody who didn't care about all that shit. What you're supposed to say, how you're supposed to feel. Somebody who didn't expect me to give up or hide any part of me for her, and didn't feel like she had to give up anything for me. You know what I mean?"

He had meant it to be rhetorical.

"I do," Emilian said.

Then his mind seemed to shift, and he shot Jack a sly glance.

"'Her?'" he asked noncommitally.

"Hmm?" he said, half-listening. Then he jumped, eyes wide. "Yes, 'her!' I'm not..." He trailed off mid-rant. "Actually," he said to himself, "that would explain a lot."

"You mean to say you've never noticed?" Emilian said, slightly incredulous. He didn't add, _Even when you were throwing yourself at me that night?_ for which Jack was profoundly grateful.

"No. I mean, er, yes."

Now that he thought of it, it also helped explain why he kept thinking back to that night. Nibbling clumsily on an earlobe and the consequent near collision with a telephone pole, or later, lying curled up against his chest, (on the condition that he stop trying to do anything else and go the hell to sleep) and how nice that had felt...

"It didn't fit in with the whole pretend-to-be-normal plan, so I guess I just never really thought about it, before."

"Before...?" Emilian prompted.

"Nothing. Forget I said that." With a concerted effort, Jack managed to control his reactions enough that he only turned a pearlescent pink.

Emilian wasn't going to.

* * *

It took Jack a long time to find his courage. It kept hiding under things when he needed it, and by the time he, figuratively speaking, chased it down with a broom and got it cornered, the opportunity had passed. 

Finally, it grew to be too much. He had Fear in one corner, Curiosity in the other (the Chance of Things Turning Out Well was very small, so it was sitting in the stands accompanied by a guardian), and while they were busy grappling Blind Stupidity jumped in and took control.

"I have a reason for you," said Jack. "Though, it's sort of a selfish one."

"Try me," said Emilian.

Couldn't ask for a better opening than that.

Jack didn't know if he was a good kisser. No one had ever complained. But he'd never ambushed anyone like this before. He had thought it would be like a dream, but things felt more real than he could ever remember. Emilian's lips were full and soft, and he wanted to know what they felt like when they were reacting instead of immobile in shock, he really wanted to know, but it suddenly leapt into focus that he never would and furthermore just how much of an idiot he was to have done this, and in a rush of generosity he figured he might as well save some trouble and reject himself, so he broke away at the very end of the narrow window of time in which he still could and said, as casually as he could manage,

"Right. You've got higher standards. I forgot."

_See? It doesn't mean anything, _he thought wildly, staring into the unreadable dark eyes. _It's not like I'm in love with you or something. It's not like I keep__catching myself in the middle of little fantasies about your hair, or your eyes, or your body, or your all of the above. It's just Jack, stupid Jack, the stupid kid who has no idea what he's doing and definitely isn't using every ounce of self-control he has to keep from doing it again.  
_

This is his last mistake.

Jack would never know where he might have talked himself down to if Emilian hadn't chosen that moment to kiss him.

And oh, some things were _good _to know.

"I do," Emilian murmured, in a low voice that sent the most amazing little tremors carousing up and down Jack's spine. "I have higher standards–" his arms snaked around Jack's waist– "than to take a boy to my bed when he is too drunk to see straight. No matter-"

kiss-

"how beautiful-"

kiss-

"this boy-"

kiss-

"might be."

_Kiss.  
_

Jack mustered up the eloquence to say, "Oh."

"You've done something to me," Emilian said, one hand tracing circles at the base of Jack's spine.

"No, not yet," Jack replied distractedly. "I mean, what?"

"I don't fully understand you," he said, "and it may be that I never will. But I want to try."

Jack picked up on the future tense.

"Does that mean," he asked cautiously, "that you'll let me stay with you?"

"If you haven't noticed, you already are," Emilian said, with a teasing smile.

Jack scowled at him. "You know what I mean."

"I do." He looked levelly at Jack. "And yes, I will. That is, if it is what you want..."

Jack almost laughed out loud. "Do you really think I'm enough of an idiot to turn _you _down? Wait, don't answer that."

Now that his mouth had been introduced to a much more interesting thing it could be doing than talking, it took the initiative in resuming previous activities. Soon enough other parts of him recognized this as an admirable trait and began petitioning rather loudly for similar privileges.

"I've, er, sorta never done this before," Jack stammered, not bothering this time to fight the heat gathering in his skin.

"Don't worry," Emilian reassured. He kissed him softly.

And grinned.

"I won't bite."

* * *

There were no dreams.

* * *

Jack knew where he was, but took inventory anyway. 

He was someplace warm, and soft, and with a singularly gorgeous man wrapped around him.

Yeah. He could live with that.

There was one thing that he didn't immediately find a name for. It perplexed him, and he let the back of his mind turn it over a few times.

_Safety, _ he decided.

Though he hadn't made any conscious sign of being awake, the arms around him drew him closer.

"Good morning," a sleep-textured voice rumbled.

"Mornin,'"Jack yawned back.

There was a sizable lump near the top of his head from when he'd thrown it back without due consideration for the relative location of the headboard, his hair was tangled enough for a family of small birds to comfortably raise their young in it, and he was sore in places he hadn't known– he was sore. From this angle, he could see only a small area of Emilian's neck that was, incidentally, mostly dedicated to what promised to be a spectacular hickey.

It had been a _good_ night.

Jack ran his hands downwards, tracing over five slanting horizontal lines, scars barely visible to the eye but daylight-stark to his questing fingertips.

"Do you want to know," he asked lazily, "what I thought when I first saw you?"

"Do I?"

"Yes. So ask."

"All right. What did you think, when you first saw me?"

"I thought, 'Wow. Most people use a pen.'"

Quiet. Then, fondly:

"You're a strange boy."

"Says the vampire."

"Hmm," Emilian said contemplatively. "I don't know about that. I may have my status revoked. Seems I've been behind on my quota of ravishing beautiful young maidens in castles with dramatically poor lighting. And I hardly practice the organ at all these days."

"I'll overlook the 'maiden' part if you promise to do some extra ravishing."

"Don't I always?"

Jack wondered if loving someone was supposed to be this easy. It never had been, with Rose; in the clarity of hindsight, he hadn't fallen in love with her so much as climbed.

As Emilian ran his thumb across the nape of his neck, Jack realized he didn't care.

"When did you get these?" he asked, indicating the tattoos that decorated Jack's body.

"A long time ago," Jack said, dropping his eyes.

"Do they mean something?"

"They..." He frowned. "I spent so much time trying not to think about it. I..." Struck suddenly by something absurd, he started laughing. "I can't remember. I honest to God can't remember."

"Then they don't mean anything," Emilian said.

"Yeah." Jack tried out the idea and found that he liked it. "They don't mean anything."

Releasing him, Emilian shifted away a little to raise his arms and stretch expansively. The loss of contact was more than made up for by the view.

"So, strange boy," he said, "what shall we do now?"

He had barely finished the sentence before finding himself gazing up into a face that he had been sure, not so long ago, that he would never see again, close enough that the unmistakable silver hair brushed against his cheek and looking now very awake.

"Oh," Jack said, an undercurrent of huskiness belying his casual tone, "I'm sure we'll think of something."

* * *

For two days, Rose waited to panic. 

For the next two, she held long, recurring monologue arguments in her head which went something like this:

_He's gone._

_Right._

_He left you._

_That's true. _

_Now you're all alone._

_What's so terrible about being alone?_

She would get stuck on that for a while, then try again:

_He could be dead for all you know._

_No, he couldn't. I know him better than that. _

_You love him._

_I thought I did. Maybe I still do._

_You need him._

_That's not love. _

And she would freeze, and sit down, and think it, again and again.

It is one of the great saving graces of life that, as disappointing as it often is to meet one's heros, it is much the same to meet one's fears.

It wasn't long before she went into his room again. The emptiness felt different, now. Merely disinterested, instead of talismanic. She wanted to know what he had left behind. As she had suspected, there wasn't much.

It was by accident that she found the number. Nine digits scrawled on the back of a pack of cigarettes, which was odd in itself, as he had never smelled of smoke. She would have noticed. Only then did she remember the cell phone, and think that he might keep it with him. Nostalgia? Maybe something like that. It was worth a try.

Dial tone.

Ring.

Ring.

Ri–

Faint: "–hell do I still have this thing?" Then clearly: "Yeah?"

"Jack?" she said hesitantly. She didn't know what she had been expecting, but the vibrancy of his voice took her aback and made her unsure.

"Listen, later, okay?" He sounded not in the least perturbed. It didn't bother her as much as it might once have. "I'm busy making out with a vampire."

Click.

It took a few minutes to sink in.

Then another few for the idea.

After a bit, she dialed again.

_Consider this, _ she thought, _a farewell present.  
_

"Hello? Yes, this is Rosemary."

"Mm-hmm."

"Yes, about that. I'm afraid there's nothing we can do with the subject now but cut him loose. The stress must have been too much for him. He's gone completely insane."

* * *

Jack set down the phone, very slowly, waiting for reality to catch up to him. He didn't know how long he stood there until Emilian sat up and asked, 

"Was it for anyone you know?"

And Jack smiled.

"Never heard of 'em."

After all, he thought as he returned to his– his lover. Yeah. As he returned to his lover, he thought, why dwell on the past, when there were so many much better things in the present?

Something occurred to him.

"You know what you said before, about not biting?" Jack asked, in a moment when his mouth was not otherwise engaged.

"Mmm?" Emilian's was busy confirming the location of the spots around Jack's neck and collarbone that made him gasp and shiver. He was fairly certain that he had discovered all of them during the last night, but one could never be too careful.

"What if I asked nicely?"

* * *

Notes: 

-Okay, I have to confess something you've likely figured out already. I love Vamp. I also cannot write him to save my life. And yet, for some reason, I keep trying.

-I also can't seem to stop playing with literary devices, though I have no idea how well they come through.

-Yep, that's a Prairie Oyster, made famous by Cowboy Bebop.

-I am far too indecisive to ever be happy with having to make up a name for an established character.

-Well folks, it looks like I may finally be getting this whole fanfiction thing out of my system. Phew. (Later edit: As it turns out, I was wrong. So very, very wrong.)


	2. One More Thing

Over the past few weeks, Jack had learned several things. The first, of course, was that nothing made for as spectacular a fight with your girlfriend as finding out that she wasn't pregnant after all, especially when it reopened the whole spy-for-the-government thing, which was something he really didn't need right now. Then there was that a guy he'd last seen through the scope of a sniper rifle wasn't dead after all, that there might have been more than one part of that relationship that was a sham, and that, when your life was fucked up enough, it was easier to trust an old enemy than try to find a friend.

Not in that order.

Jack yawned and put on a pot of coffee. He sat down, watching a stray quickstep across the last scraps of lazy mist loitering above the road. It had grown a lot less scrawny ever since it had gotten the idea somewhere that this house could be cajoled into giving edible tribute. Neither of the inhabitants had been able to disillusion it.

There was a lot more about that old enemy. Like that his real name was Emilian. Or that sometimes, while he was speaking, a thought would catch on his mind, and he would break off and stare at something far off, then continue a few minutes later at exactly the place in the sentence where he had left off. And that when he splashed water on his face in the morning he flinched and shook his head like a cat. And that his mouth always tasted sort of like cloves, even when there was absolutely no reason it should. Was Rose Rose's real name? Jack laughed to himself when he realized that he'd never have to know.

Water running. Coffeepot's ruminations. Sigh of distant traffic.

There was that even though, like Jack, he had spent enough of his life doing things that gave his employers good reason to want to keep him at least happy enough to keep his mouth shut, and so money would never be an issue, there was only one vice he allowed himself to indulge. That this indulgence was beautiful old furniture, the kind with names, some of which Jack suspected might end in Roman numerals.

_"Chyort poberi!"_

That, of all the languages he knew, he considered Russian the best to curse in.

Plaintive miaowing at the back door. Impatient thing. Jack got up and rummaged through the refrigerator.

He had been back at the table for some time, sipping at coffee and watching the freeloader vanish ungratefully into the bushes, when with a few softly thudding footsteps, the population of the kitchen doubled.

"Morning," said Jack, accepting that he might never warrant a detour before the coffeepot.

"Grrrmph."

That it was hard not to watch him. And that he was graceful even when it was too early to be coherent.

It took longer than usual. As if he was trying to avoid turning around. He would have to, soon enough.

As Emilian sat, Jack shamelessly inspected the new decorations adorning the dark, lean face. Lacerations cut across it in disordered crosshatch, oozing sullenly. Alongside and beneath the neat goatee was a field of shallow, irregular marrs, as though it had been strewn with red snowmelt. The overall effect was of having gotten into a serious altercation with a mammal that had been determined to make up what it lacked in size in claws and rage.

Emilian's eyes smoldered and dared him to ask.

Jack sipped, and waited.

Another thing he had learned was patience, and how often it was rewarded.

Emilian gave him the long, low look of a monarch who had just been handed a carta that was showing signs of turning unforgivably magna.

"It is very difficult to shave," he said, dignity deep and labyrinthine as the architecturally unlikely catacombs beneath the sort of citadel that never received any weather but lightning storms, "when one does not have a reflection."

Jack nodded sympathetically. Setting down his cup, he stood, and walked from the room.

Emilian closed his eyes and took a long draught.

He said, "I can hear you laughing, you know."

Of all the things Jack had learned, this was unique in that it made absolutely no difference.

* * *

Notes: 

-Written for the theme "cursing in Russian." One of the more educational challenges I've participated in.


	3. Imbibe

_Let us go out this evening for pleasure. The night is still young._ - Symphony of the Night

There was nothing uneviable about taking pleasure in sustenance. More so, to a soldier; if life at all is a luxury, then luxury in life is doubly so.

"Delicious."

The silver-haired boy, known first as Raiden and then as Jack, always Jack, in the pleasure that the simple takes from being applied to the indescribable, rolled the bite in his mouth, eyelids meeting in a thin black seam.

His companion ventured a foray into his own plate, and concluded, "Not bad."

The lighting was low, allowing them to appreciate what was not revealed as much as what was. The lazy play of shadow on Jack's face threw the high planes and pale tones into sharp contrast, harshening him into something exotic.

A glance and gesture, inviting.

Metal drifting to him, the smooth spare motions that belied his heritage. Addition of green, dark to match the shadows. Vanished, the reagent to evoke the twist of lip that was, in privacy, his motive.

"Ugh. That's awful."

"It's an acquired taste," he said, knowing and enjoying that his eyes were very black.

"Can't see why anyone would want to."

"Bitterness can accentuate the sweet. Like good wine, or music with underlying discord."

"I thought you didn't drink...wine," the boy said, because he could get away with it.

The glass lifted, the liquid in it gold verging on clarity, for reasons of equal parts preference and desire to be contrary. "What shall we drink to?"

An answering salute, in long fingers that could afford to be languid.

"To finding someone more fucked up than yourself."

Glass rang, in a spectrum above other sound.

His hand rose. Paused. Eyes lifted instead to the boy across the table, head thrown back so that the silver hair he possessed without the age required to give it legitimacy hung down that it might continue behind the boy's back, endless, unbeknownst to him. Watched the smooth motions of his throat, and thought about him, a boy corrupted so fully that he could never be anything but innocent.

Unbidden, his senses prowled for the scent of wet iron.

Jack looked at him when he sensed the movement as the other stood, head still thrown back and glass hovering beside his lips. His eyes were suspended in curiosity. "Hm? What is it?"

Here and now, the marks, straight black ranks on white skin just visible as his neck arched above his collar, might have been tricks of the light.

There were other marks on him that his companion preferred.

Fingers caught at his chin and lifted, in bare suggestion.

"Your thought," he murmured, voice rich to his own senses, "was correct."

The boy said, "Oh."

When the teeth pierced him, he said it again, but more so.

His lips sealed to the smooth heat of him, nothing but minor encouragement was needed to fill his mouth with hot, rich liquid, as if it were eager to nourish him and pulse in exotic foreign veins. He was always surprised at his firmness, the corded strength of him. Something about the boy set at an angle in his memory, making him work not to think of him as delicate when in truth the fingers that clutched at his back were as weapon-hardened as his own. In this closeness he could partake of his heartbeat. He could feel the rush of breath, and the impact of its release.

"Ah..."

His eyes were closed and his senses heightened, carrying to him the muffled meeting of carpet and forgotten glass, as another hand grasped at him. Each sense was tactile, the gasps that seemed to echo and magnify, the shiver that slid through him. The two of them existed for each other, the sole inmates in an inner universe of symbiosis.

He knew what it meant, that he would sleep beside him, and that he would give him this.

He was not greedy. A gentleman preferred to sip, rather than gulp.

It would not do to become overintoxicated.

He loosened the embrace, eyes sliding open as his fingers set against skin that knew how to quickly heal. Jack's eyes were shut, lashes long and stark against improbably flushed cheeks, breath barely audible as short rasps, lips parted in an invitation his companion could never be so rude as to decline.  
Up to meet them, unsatiated, the ways of drinking him in more vivid by contrast. Wet heat that answered, plunged and caressed to partake of flavor that even in its metallic bite, as he had been told, obliterated, for a time, the memory of gunpowder.

They pulled apart, Jack emitting a long, shuddering breath, as though under the influence of some foreign aura, some force compelled to subject them to one last moment of awareness before they sank to the state from whence there was no recourse but each other. There was a slow bead of crimson tracking down to pool in the divot of the collarbone.

Jack looked at him, eyes wide.

He couldn't disappoint him, after all.

He ran fastidious tongue across his lips, maddening exaggerated motion, and looked down at where the liquid threatened to trickle down to the partly-open shirt collar.

"Wouldn't want that to stain," he murmured.

"Yeah," Jack breathed.

The older man had never considered himself a tease. He always kept his promises.

He leaned in.

* * *

The night smelled of damp dirt and impending rain, concrete and the faint wet iron underscent that coagulated wherever humanity congregated. Hum of neon, crow-call laughter distant or gratingly near, city dark sounds.

Sets of footsteps, two that had never broken the habit of movement as a precious thing not to be wasted, spare and unextravagant.

"Well," said Jack, "there's another restaurant we're not welcome back at."

The boy stuck his hands into his pockets, leaned back to look at the sky, and stumbled into his companion.

"Sorry," he said, laughing sheepishly, as the taller man steadied him with an arm around his waist. "Still a little lightheaded, I guess."

They suited each other, in a way. One had been the White Devil and one had more than once been called a fallen angel, by casual lovers of the more breathlessly superlative sort. Both long ago.

"Can't see any stars around here, anyway," he mumbled.

A streak of decency nothing had ever erased held the older man from making a horrifically graceless innuendo about making him see them before the night was done.

Though he did deserve it, for the bit about wine.

Both shared the fondly sadistic security of knowing that they were at worst minor demons, and that vice could make the devil his own victim. As heavily guarded as the gates of Hell might be, few ever remembered to lock the service entrance.

A group of young men spilled out of a lighted entrance, accompanied by a rumbling whine of music of the sort that spoke the imperative and mostly concerned acts of improbably lewd physicality. Judging from appearance and average volume, they had been making their best efforts to oblige it.

The two men sifted through them, feeling more a cloud of diaphanous noise and odor than corporate beings. To one of them, at least.

"Mmph," said Jack, after they had passed. "I need to cut my hair shorter."

An inquisitive sound.

"One of those guys grabbed my ass on the way by," he explained languorously.

"It's dark," said the other, half-hearted attempt to keep the amusement from his voice doomed from the start.

"It's gotta be the hair," he said. He lifted a silver section and gave it a lazy glare.

His companion leaned his head to one side, indirect reference to a shrug.

He said, "I like it."

Slick pavement shone in the streetlights, limned in flickering reflections. One pulsed sullenly and went out as they passed beneath it.

"You seem to do that," said Jack..

"Do what?"

"Make things unnecessarily dramatic."

The darker man looked up at the lamppost. After a moment, as though considering, it lit.

"Better?"

Jack leaned against his shoulder. "Much."

This close, Jack's scent was detectable, wound beneath that of the unattractive architecture of garbage bins that reclined in the sorts of alleys one expected a stranger to emerge from, and of rain dirtied even as it was fresh-fallen. Beneath that, proving its existence only by being noticeable when it was gone, was the scent, or perhaps sensation, of thousands of humans leaning against one another, their anger and sex and tension and sleep. Close enough, a man's breath came in their pattern, if he let it, like steps falling into rhythm as he threaded through a waltz, that had begun before him and would go on long after he departed. The air smelled different, with him, whether walking through the night or discovering that an establishment frowned upon impromptu phlebotomy.

"Vamp?"

The corners of his mouth pulled. "My name is-"

Jack's hand waved. "I know." He adjusted the arm encircling him. "Just checking if you were paying attention."

"I'm always paying attention."

A bag rustled against asphalt on the wind. Jack kicked at it, shaking off a shower of precipitation.

After a moment, "What?"

"Hmm?" Jack looked off and up. "Oh." Shrugged. "Don't remember."

The space between buildings played host to other forms, groups and couples in varying stages of inebriation. The lighting was still uneven. They kept a pocket of night to themselves.

"So," said Jack, "when do I get to bite _you?_"

"You don't have the teeth for it."

His timing was less than ideal. Jack had to wait another block before they were home, and he could commence attempting to prove him wrong.

* * *

Notes: 

-Written because a challenge with the pairing Vamp/Raiden and the theme of food is just asking for it, and entirely for the line about not being welcome in that restaurant anymore.


End file.
